Ace goes into great detail about the shady methods used by Baucus and the Democrats in the Senate Finance Committee to get the CBO to rate it as a deficit reduction plan.

By the way, let the fascism begin.  The Senate Finance Committee just sent the Baucus plan through 14-9.

The Democrats gamed the CBO’s self-imposed rules of using only assumptions spelled out in the legislation, no matter how illogical or stupid they are, in order to get the scoring they wanted.

The post goes into many specifics, but here’s the outline.

1. Increased revenues through increased taxes begin in 2010, but new payments and outflows begin in 2013. Meaning the ten-year window the CBO is required to score contains ten years of higher taxes and higher revenues, but only seven years of higher expenses.
2. A large amount of the expense for federal health care spending is simply pushed off to the states, taking it off the fed’s books
3. Part of the revenue is supposed to come from increased taxes on high-end insurance plans. Trouble is, health care costs rise every year, and in some states, the health care costs are high enough that it won’t take too many years before many plans are deemed “Cadillac plans” and get higher taxes imposed on them — according to the bill as it is written.
4. A lot of “savings” come from cutting Medicare and Medicaid… supposedly. But year after year Congress blocks any proposed cuts.
5. It’s nearly an absolute rule that a politician can’t vote to cut Medicare or Medicaid — not without putting his career at risk. Health care coverage is income like any other — if your employer gives you a $5000 insurance policy, that’s $5000 in income.
   [...]
   The Baucus/Obama plan will put millions of Americans in the exact same position as the nation’s seniors — where the most important factor (or one of the top three, at least) is whether a politician promises to increase their salary, keep it at the same rate, or give them a raise.

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Tagged

Democrat Double-Speak, Healthcare, Obamacare, Socialism, US Senate